© AI Training forbidden - Selected Classical Music in the Poland of Chopin - Reviewer's Notebook

The young Maurizio Pollini The indiscriminate power of Nature has now claimed the soul of Maurizio Pollini, one of the greatest of legendary pianists. He accompanied me in sublime Chopin all my adult life in London and through Bach and innumerable piano compositions leading ultimately to the more inaccessible end of the music spectrum, the piano compositions of Arnold Schoenberg, Boulez, Nono, Stockhausen ….. Glorious, uplifting musical memories overwhelm me at this fraught time in world history  Sublime creation lies here, not destruction At such moments as these, one is forced to think of the fragility yet ungovernable strength of life and musical art. So much forces one to listen to music overshadowed by the constant news of brutal  deaths and human suffering, particularly of children, that we receive each and every day Such a rocky spiritual Everest we are forced to climb just now  More emotion than I can express in mere words…. Thank God Pollini left us ineradi...

NIFCCD 146 - Lessel, Haydn,  Voříšek , Beethoven, Chopin (2023) I feel I have nothing left to say about this magnificent, electrifying recording apart from the fact it is without doubt the finest period piano recording I have ever heard.  In my adopted role as music critic I have experienced many!  First of all, here is an extract of my criticism of the Ritter performance in Stage II of the competition when he won the 1st International Chopin Competition on Period Instruments in September 2018 : Tomasz Ritter has had a distinguished career associated with both the harpsichord and the historical piano with his outstanding teachers. He has won prestigious prizes and performed with fine orchestras under well-known conductors. I expected his recital to be remarkable and so it was. He began unexpectedly with a stylish rendition of the Kurpiński polonaise on the  Buchholtz  with most attractive phrasing which added greatly to the period feel. The Chopin polo...

  Eric Guo Winner of the 2nd International Chopin Piano Competition on Period instruments Warsaw, 2023 Fryderyk Chopin 214th Birthday Concert,  Warsaw  1st March 2024 Photographs by  Wojciech  Grzędziński Eric Guo chose to play the infrequently performed Chopin  F minor concerto arranged for solo piano by Chopin .  Remember despite the opus number,  this was the first piano concerto Chopin wrote. It follows the Mozart model and was directly influenced by the  style brillant  of Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Moscheles and Ries.  Schumann wrote of it: 'of the second concerto, which we can all together barely reach, we can only kiss the edge of his royal garment.' This inspirational remark on its gestation is rightly famous: ‘As I already have, perhaps unfortunately, my ideal, whom I faithfully serve, without having spoken to her for half a year already, of whom I dream, in remembrance of whom was created the adagio of my concerto’  (...